A Conference on Uyghur crisis and professor Ilham Tohti
Post Tagged with: "Ilham Tohti autobiography"
-
Ilham Tohti autobiography
Ilham Tohti wrote this autobiography back in 2011 to ensure that he maintains a written account of his life, including his understanding and position regarding the Uyghur issue as well as the motivation behind his actions. Below is a copy of his account of these things: I was born in 1969 into a Uighur family in Atush City, Kizilsu Kirghiz Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). I grew up in a government employee residential compound where Uighurs and Hans lived together. My grandfather’s generation was illiterate, but my father was among the first generation of educated Uighurs brought up in New China. At the end of the 1950s, after my father graduated from middle school, he was sent to the interior of China for college. He studied at the Central University for Nationalities [now Minzu University], Beijing Normal University, and Lanzhou Railway Institute. After graduation, he worked at the Southern Xinjiang People’s Liberation Army (PLA) military zone, and then as a civilian. In 1971, at the age of 28, my father died tragically during the Cultural Revolution. I was two, and my little brother was only 11 months old. It was my mother who raised the four of us, my brothers and me, while doing auto repair work in Atush. Today, most of my father’s colleagues have become XUAR-level cadres. The older generation has kept silent about the past, and I have not understood the complicated politics of the time. As a result, while we are proud of our father, I don’t really know what kind of a person he was and how he died. In 1980, my eldest brother joined the army at age 15, but he soon left the army and pursued studies in universities in Shanghai, Urumqi, Dalian, and Beijing. As a cadre, he served as […]